Amsterdam has all the benefits, as well as the disadvantages, of a multi-cultural city. There is an excellent choice of cultural, shopping and sporting facilities, but in some areas drug-related crime, poverty and racial tensions are serious problems. Housing prices are low compared with many other...

De Baarsjes

Named after a 17th-century inn called de drie baarsjes (the three basses the fish) de Baarsjes has only been an official part of Amsterdam since the 1920s. The buildings here are in the Amsterdam School of architecture, and designed for civil servants and teachers. What was a lot of space for a respected citizen and his family in the 1920s and 1940s, is now a rather smallish house of only 35-45 sqm, costing about 290 per month. Bigger, four-room apartments cost roughly 600. Like most of the 1920s city developments, the buildings are four storeys high. De Baarsjes has the highest population density in Amsterdam, and what a diverse population it is. At the last count, people of more than a hundred different nationalities were living in the quarter.